BITCOIN has yet to recover losses of the last fortnight and both BTC and ETH have now suffered their worst first-quarter price performances in history while Ripple has suffered the most out of the top three major cryptocurrencies.

Assetz Capital, a peer-to-peer business lender conducted a survey of 1,000 investors.

It found that 43 percent believe that the entire cryptocurrency market is on the brink of collapse, while 40 percent feel cryptocurrencies are still too immature at present with significant risks attached.

Stuart Law, CEO at Assetz Capital said: “The rise in cryptocurrency over the past 12 months has been driven by consumers’ search for fairer returns on their investments. Traditional banking has failed to deliver in this sense over the last decade, so as technology makes alternative investments more accessible, it is obvious that investors would look elsewhere.

“However, there’s clearly still a great deal of uncertainty amongst smart investors when it comes to cryptocurrency – the market is still in its unpredictable infancy, so the risk and wild daily swings in value of cryptocurrencies is proving too much for many.”

20.17 - UPDATE - BTC been steadily climbing since 3.30pm

According to CoinMarketCap bitcoin has been rising since 3.30pm and now sits at $7,515.

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of all things cryptocurrency, including price, regulation, innovation and financial crime.

Bitcoin is priced at $7,360 at the time of press with Ethereum down at $397 and Ripple at $0.51.

Metcalfe's law - in short, a way of understanding rising and falling value whereby the value of a network is proportional to the square of its users - has been used by a team of Swiss researchers to claim that bitcoin's market value by the end of the year should be no more than $77 billion.

As reported by CNBC, Spencer Wheatley and Didier Sornette, both professors of entrepreneurial risks at ETH Zurich, claim that BTC will fall $41 billion, or nearly 35 percent, less than bitcoin's market capitalization Monday of $118 billion.

The Swiss researchers said: "Looking forward, our analysis identifies a substantial but not unprecedented overvaluation in the price of bitcoin, suggesting many months of volatile sideways bitcoin prices ahead."